Raya Shira Cohen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Folklore and Folk Culture Research Program. In 2024, she received the Cherik Center Fellowship for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel and the MAASH Fellowship for Outstanding Students in Folklore and Folk Culture. Her doctoral research, supervised by Professor Hagar Salamon, investigates the dynamics of change in the pilgrimage and ritual surrounding the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron.
Cohen traces the transformation of ritual practices, symbols, and authority structures in an era shaped by trauma, regulatory intervention, and social crisis. Her research focuses on how notions of sanctity and danger are mediated through body, space, and collective memory, and how distinct interpretive frameworks coexist within the sacred site.
Her work also explores the intergenerational transmission of religious and emotional traditions, with particular emphasis on symbolic and ritual parenthood as expressed in practices of initiation, gender segregation, and the father-son dyad embodied in the tomb's dual burial. Cohen analyzes three main groups of participants: Hasidic communities, whose ritual performances express hierarchical structure, clear paternal models, and strict gender separation; North African communities, whose practices emphasize fluidity, expansion, and affective presence; and neo-Hasidic groups, that adopt and transform Hasidic traditions while functioning as spiritual spaces and hybrid identity formation.